


Slowly It Unfolds

by fencesit



Category: Naruto
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, POV Hyuuga Hinata, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/pseuds/fencesit
Summary: On a mission with Shikamaru, Hinata gets a little reassurance.





	Slowly It Unfolds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroberuka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroberuka/gifts).



> I never thought about putting Hinata and Shikamaru together but it was a blast to write you this treat about them.

Hyūga Hinata had been prepared for a fight, but not for a trap. 

The moment her team breaches the door to the room, the entire hallway lights up with chakra and then between one moment and the next the ground drops out from under her feet. Meters beneath her there’s suddenly a steep mountain incline. It’s pristine, fridged, and unrecognizable. 

The snow on the mountain’s shoulder is soft, fresh, and so cold it’s completely dry, without even an icy crust of sun-melted snow. It compresses beneath her with a soft _whump_ as she hits it from above, going down and across. The impact of her body sends a white, sparkling puff of snow into the air that only continues to grow as Hinata slides and tumbles a half-dozen meters down the slope before finally coming to a stop embedded deep in the snow drift at the edge of a stand of stumpy pine trees. 

Only then can she breathe in the frigid air, struggling past the pain of having the wind knocked out of her, and assess her situation. 

She’s not sure yet if she’s hurt, but she does know that she’s alone. Nara Shikamaru — her captain for the mission — had been slightly less than arm’s-length away from her before the seal trap had been sprung, just close enough that they could pair up in a fight without getting tangled up in each other, but now he’s gone, not dropped onto the mountain alongside her. Likewise, their other two teammates, who’d rushed ahead of them into the room are nowhere to be seen, even with her Byakugan. There are no enemies here, either, and no buildings or roads, just snow and rock and pines. 

Hinata runs through all of the checks Kurenai-sensei taught her when she was a genin, moving her limbs slowly, and finds that although every part of her is freezing cold and no doubt bruised, nothing is broken, sprained, dislocated, or bleeding. 

She is cold, though. The snow presses in on her from all sides; there’s even a good ten centimeters on top of her, collapsed from the snowbank she’s embedded into and dropped from the trees above her. She can see through it just fine with the Byakugan, but the longer she lays here the more the snow will melt and soak through her clothes. If she had mastered the Kaiten.... 

But it’s no use wishing for things that she doesn’t have. That never solves anything. 

The first step of the Kaiten is emitting chakra from all your pores simultaneously and evenly. Hinata isn’t very good at either of those parts, but she doesn’t need to be _perfect_ right now. There’s no one watching and she doesn’t intend to spin or deflect any projectiles. Instead, she lets chakra seep out of her as steadily as she can until it protects her skin and clothes in a thin layer. 

This is a common Hyūga chakra exercise, a trick taught to children that helps keep their clothes neat and clean and teaches them control and focus. Most parents show their children how it works and then reward them when they start coming home from playing outside with still-clean clothing, although Hinata hadn’t been much for playing in the grass and dirt as a child. She had learned to apply the trick at the same time she had been taught to fall and get back up. 

As Hinata digs herself out, the chakra provides a warm layer between herself and the snow. Meltwater beads against the chakra barrier and rolls off of her as she moves, freezing as it leaves contact with her chakra. Because her output isn’t even or delicate it’s definitely not a technique she can keep up forever — normally Hinata would only use it for as long as it takes to roll through the dirt and come back to her feet — but the snow is half-again as tall as she is, so the drain is well worth it. 

Once she’s pried herself out of the deepest parts of the snowbank, Hinata finesses her chakra as carefully as possible, spreading it out across the snow with an even lighter touch than required for water walking, and crawls out on top of the deep snow cover in a manner that would be impossible for a civilian. 

Hinata isn’t going to waste energy pushing through the chest-high snow that covers most of the mountainside unless she runs so low on chakra that there’s no other choice. 

Standing in the bright afternoon sunlight, Hinata checks over her equipment and finds that everything is still attached, at least, including the kunai pouch that holds the sealing scroll Naruto had given her for her recent birthday. From there it’s a matter of trying to figure out where she is, and that’s... a little harder. 

None of their team had had a chance to examine the seal trap that had caught them. Hinata hadn’t even realized that the carvings she was seeing _were_ seals until the very last moments, which unfortunately means that whatever’s happened to the others and however far Hinata is from where she started, it’s definitely her fault. Hopefully _she_ was the only one to get flung through some kind of summoning technique and dumped out on the side of a mountain, although Hinata’s not willing to count on that, and starts scouting the mountain side diligently. 

Even on a second, wider inspection, the mountain she’s landed on is undisturbed except for the evidence of her own ungainly landing. 

Hinata turns the search outwards. She uses the search grid Neji-nii-san had explained to her when she’d tried to turn his description of his last mission with his genin team to something more... productive than hearing how frequently Rock Lee runs off to parts unknown. The key goal of the technique is to cover as much ground as possible while using the least amount of chakra, which means a lot of running, stopping to look around, and then looking again. Especially for someone with a range as large as Hinata. 

Across the valley and halfway up the next mountain, she first catches a glimpse of movement consistent with a ninja. She looks closer — there’s Nara Shikamaru moving through the snow, the one arm tucked into his jōnin vest. From the looks of his tracks in the snow he hasn’t moved very far at all from where he landed. 

Probably trying to get his bearings, Hinata thinks at first, but then as he continues to move around in the same area she thinks he must be looking for shelter from the storm clouds rolling in from the west — and that theory holds up, but Shikamaru’s search slowly becomes less orderly, then less urgent, until finally Shikamaru sits down out of the wind but still in the snow and stops moving. 

* * *

It begins snowing on her way up the shoulder of the crest Shikamaru is on, and when she reaches him he’s covered in a light dusting of snow. It freckles his hair like stars, not melting or blowing away. He has a pulse when Hinata crouches to check, and a quick jolt of chakra makes him stir to bleary wakefulness. 

“Where are you hurt?” she asks him urgently. 

Even if she had sought out how to perform a diagnostic jutsu, she can’t perform medical techniques because of her Gentle Fist training, and although she has more than adequate first aid training it’s a bad idea to go poking at the injuries of a jōnin you don’t know well. Even waking him had been a risk, but she needs him to tell her what’s wrong with him before she moves him. 

Hinata would like to believe that she and Shikamaru know each other well enough that he wouldn’t instinctively attack her, but such a belief would be tantamount to lying to herself, which is a very dangerous thing to do on a mission. She and Shikamaru have only very rarely worked together in the field; he’s not likely to instinctively trust her. 

Shikamaru looks up at her. His pupils are dilated; he blinks lazily at her and frowns. He says, “Dunno?” He brings his free hand up to fumble at the clasps of his vest. When that doesn’t work, he tries to use his other arm — and flinches badly. “Ow. Wrist?” 

“Okay,” Hinata says carefully. Calmly. She can fix that. Probably. She can make it better. And the exposure to the elements — Hinata can handle that too. She can handle all of it because she _has to_. 

She unzips Shikamaru’s vest to get at his arm, and he lets her, leaning back against the rock outcropping sheltering them from the wind and zoning out. His vest is damp even at his core, the metal zipper freezing and stiff, and she has to support his arm at the elbow to keep him from setting it down. He has a black long sleeve shirt over fine metal mesh, and they’re lucky it’s his wrist he hurt because trying to get at his forearm or upper arm would be nearly impossible. 

Whether or not his wrist is broken will remain a mystery, as she can’t even get him to focus long enough to wiggle his fingers, but there’s only one thing she can do for his wrist whether it’s broken or not: a splint. 

Hinata finds a straight branch on the closest pine tree and uses chakra to sever it from the tree, strip it of bark and offshoots, and then split it apart into several straight lengths of wood and trim one of them to the right length to rest across Shikamaru’s forearm, wrist, and hand. She also pulls her forehead protector from her neck. The metal plate is easy to unfasten from the length of fabric and tuck it into a pocket, and the fabric her hitai-ate is usually fastened to is definitely the sturdiest length of fabric she can get her hands on without unsealing anything, destroying her clothing, or resorting to her snow-damp thigh wrap, and it’s probably best not to advertise their village more than necessary, anyway, and she can see that Shikamaru has already removed his own hitai-ate from his shoulder. 

Shikamaru’s mesh undershirt is freezing and his shirt and vest are both soaked through, but at least the shirt and mesh will protect him from splinters. She uses the fabric from her forehead protector to secure the splint around Shikamaru’s wrist and then, after a moment of thought, tucks the wrist back into Shikamaru’s jōnin vest where it won’t get into any more trouble. 

He really needs to get his mesh undershirt off and change into warm, dry clothes that won’t suck the heat from his skin, but stripping him down _here_ won’t do much of any good. Once they’re somewhere somewhat dry and warm, Hinata can unseal her full medical kit and all of her camping gear, so they need to get farther down the mountain, away from the huge drifts of snow, somewhere they can find shelter. 

Slinging Shikamaru over her shoulder works, but only because she’s just a bare half-head shorter than him. With the awkward weight of Shikamaru bent over her shoulder, the trip back down the mountain is precarious and achingly slow. Half a mile under the treeline there’s dry wood to be found with just a little searching, and another half mile down after that the mountain is pockmarked with small caves that will make better shelters than anything Hinata could construct herself. 

It takes chakra to get down the mountain, chakra to gather firewood, chakra to make sure the firewood really is dry enough to burn, chakra to start the fire, chakra to unseal her camping gear and first aid supplies, and chakra to strip Shikamaru down out of his wet clothing, get him into a spare pair of Naruto’s sweatpants, and then wrestle him under the pile of blankets they’ll be sharing for the foreseeable future. 

Then it takes even more chakra to trap the lead up and entrance to the cave they’re holed up in as thoroughly as she can, using every trick Shino ever showed her and even a few of Kiba’s meaner prank ideas. Then finally Hinata can take off her own wet outer layer of clothing and slip under the covers in her undershirt and a fresh pair of leggings from her sealed supplies, leaving her things spread out with Shikamaru’s to dry. 

Shikamaru himself is chill to the touch, still, and unconscious again, so Hinata scooches cautiously across the blanket she’s laid down. Shikamaru’s core temperature needs to be raised, and close contact with someone else is the best way to do that short of medical jutsu. He hadn’t reacted badly at all to her waking him up earlier, and she’s stripped him of anything he might reach for to hurt her, anyway, so at _worse_ she’ll be in for an awkward grappling session when he wakes up. 

Chest-to-chest is best for helping to warm someone else’s core in an emergency situation. When Hinata had learned that, she’d imagined the other person would be awake and involved in the awkward process of sorting out limb positions and so on. As it is, Hinata just has to do her best, tugging and rolling Shikamaru cautiously until his weight is half-crushing her, by which time Hinata is shivering from the cold of the cave. 

Shikamaru’s breath puffs steadily against her collarbone. The fire crackles and sparks. 

Hinata is exhausted, so tired that once she’s settled Shikamaru on top of her and rearranged the blankets, she feels certain she won’t be able to move for weeks — but still she can’t bring herself to sleep. Every ten minutes she activates her Byakugan until her whole face aches and then goes numb. By that time the storm that was threatening earlier is howling through the valley so fiercely that any enemy who could get through it to threaten them would almost certainly be too strong for them to fight. 

They’re safe — or at least as safe as they can be, under the circumstances — but still Hinata lays awake, looking at the ceiling, until Shikamaru stirs. He makes a curious sound of recognition that _might_ be her name, and squirms until he finds the blanket underneath and can lever himself up on his forearms. 

It lets chill air from the cave creep under the blankets; Shikamaru immediately lowers himself back down to his previous position with a quiet swear. He’s long since started shivering, and now his shivers redouble, like he might shake all apart. 

“You need to bring chakra to your hands and feet,” Hinata urges him. 

“Later,” Shikamaru promises, but Hinata’s woken her younger sister up early in the morning often enough to know that _later_ actually means _go away_. 

She can’t let Shikamaru fall back asleep. Hinata’s hands fist in the blankets. Her heart hammers in her chest, blood rushes through her head. It’s like the terror of combat, but there’s nothing to fight and no one to fall back on for support. It’s just her, and a cave, and the wind howling like it might blow the mountain down. 

“I can’t do it for you,” she tells Shikamaru, “but you have to do it.” Her voice shakes. 

Shikamaru groans with annoyance, but he starts cycling chakra through his body, and with a little more prompting he does it thoroughly enough to prevent frostbite from taking his extremities. Hinata falls asleep watching his chakra cycle through his coils, to his hands, his feet, his brain, and back. Lighting up every gate one after the other, proving he’s alive. Shikamaru will have a plan, she tells herself. He probably thought of one while she was still tumbling through snow, end over end, dizzy and panicked. 

* * *

Shikamaru is awake when Hinata finally stirs. He’s laying the wrong way around on the blankets, though, his feet two lumps next to Hinata’s head. When she sits up a little, she can see that he’s leaning out of the bottom of the blankets to get more firewood. 

Hinata hadn’t been thinking about how to best arrange things so that they won’t have to get up to get anything when she’d set them up in the cave. She’d been too tired for that — but it’s probably the kind of thing that Shikamaru would have thought of. She can see already that her bag has inexplicably moved closer as well, although she doesn’t think Shikamaru has actually left the comfort of the blankets. 

Her unasked questions are soon answered, though: when Shikamaru runs out of branches he can grab with his one good hand he uses a weak, inexact chakra thread to yank more towards him. 

Hinata lays back down because sitting up at all just lets warm air escape. Eventually Shikamaru must be content with their stock of firewood’s positioning and he completes a complicated maneuver that involves a lot of shimmying and twisting around to end up with his head back where it should be. He lays on his side, facing her, and she turns to lay the same way. Their knees brush. 

“The others?” Shikamaru asks. He still doesn’t look very good, pale and exhausted, but Hinata supposes that she must not look much better. 

“I don’t know,” Hinata says. “I only found you, but I’ll — I’ll try again.” 

Her entire face aches, but she grits her teeth and activates her Byakugan. To the back of them and under them there’s just mountain: caves and crags and rocks and dirt, which Hinata checks very briefly for enemies, of course, and then ignores. It’s night out, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to looking for ninja with the Byakugan, except.... 

“There’s nothing,” Hinata says. “No one. Just... mountains.” And the storm, which has only grown worse, but Shikamaru should be able to hear the storm. 

Hinata deactivates her dōjutsu. After a few moments of troubled silence, Hinata adds a quiet, desperate apology. She knows that worrying if Shikamaru is upset with her isn’t useful right now, but she can’t help the way her throat twists up at the thought, the itchy sensation of shame crawling all over her skin, demanding she shrink away, tuck herself under the blankets and hide like Shikamaru might forget she exists — and _caused_ this mess — if he can’t see her. 

“Uh,” Shikamaru says, breaking off from his own thoughts and eyeing her. “Why? You looked, you didn’t find. Now we have more information.” 

“I... suppose,” Hinata mummers, unconvinced. 

“How far apart did we land?” Shikamaru asks. 

Hinata has to think for a moment, but she gives him an approximation based on seeing him with her Byakugan from the mountain where she landed and how long it took her to get to him. 

It’s not an exact measurement by any stretch of the imagination, but Shikamaru nods, says nothing, and goes back to thinking. Or maybe just shivering and huddling, but Hinata is pretty sure that Nara are inclined to do everything while also thinking long and hard about everything. 

Unable to fall back asleep, Hinata casts around for something to do to take up her own time instead of just laying there uselessly feeling terrible, and eventually pulls out camping rations from her bag. A protein bar for each of them. A canteen of water that they have to share. And two small boxes of raisins that have the kind of cartoons used to market to civilian kids on them, which make Shikamaru do a double-take when she plops the rations down on the blanket between them. 

“Are these standard Hyuuga rations?” he asks, shaking the box of raisins at her. The cartoon raisin on the front is dressed like an old lady, a kind obaa-san who the slogan on the box pronounces _Wrinkly But Sweet!_

Hinata can feel her face growing a little warm, even in the still-chill air of the cave. “Naruto gave them to me,” she admits. 

“He _would_ ,” Shikamaru agrees fondly. 

The provenance of the incongruously civilian snacks established, Shikamaru moves on to trying to tear open the tiny cardboard flaps on the top of his box of raisins, but it defeats him. He wiggles the fingers of his splinted hand and winces. 

Hinata should have thought of that. “Um — I can—” 

He passes her the box and she opens it for him. There’s an apology on the tip of her tongue, but before she can say it, Shikamaru asks, “Did he at least get you flowers, too?” 

She can feel heat rising to her face, but at least it’s probably dim enough in the cave that Shikamaru can’t tell. 

“He, um, he said he bought them to give to Hokage-sama, but she was in too bad of a mood to appreciate the joke, so... he thought I might like to have them on my mission.” Hinata looks down at her own box, opening the cardboard flaps carefully and deliberately, feeling that maybe she’s misrepresented Naruto. Has she made it sound like too much of an afterthought? Like Naruto was just trying to get rid of them? Because — it hadn’t been like that. But she doesn’t know how to explain what it _had_ been like. 

Naruto defies explanation. 

Fondly, Shikamaru mutters, “That idiot,” before he starts eating raisins two or three at a time. 

Hinata knows — has been told by several relatives — that she herself just looks like she’s squinting when she’s deep in thought. But Shikamaru looks properly pensive as he chews, which is downright unfair. Eventually, after they’ve finished their snack, she can’t take the silence anymore and blurts out, “What should we do?” 

Shikamaru’s eyes turn to consider her. “What do _you_ think we should do?” he asks. 

She shrinks back a little deeper under their pile of blankets. “I don’t know.” 

“You must have some idea,” he prods, tone mild. “You’ve done great so far.” 

There’s nothing wrong with what he’s said. Absolutely nothing. It’s not cruel or cutting, it doesn’t highlight errors Hinata’s already apologized for — if she didn’t know better, she would even call it _sincere_. But Hinata can feel the pressure building at the corner of her eyes, she can feel something like a small, terrified animal scrabbling at the back of her throat, ready to wail and keen if she opens her mouth. 

Hinata shakes her head furiously, unable to speak without the dam breaking. She’s on a _mission_ , and it’s not even a mission with Kiba or Shino or Kurenai. Shikamaru is almost completely a stranger, for all that they had been classmates at the academy, and he outranks her in every way. She can’t cry in front of him. 

There’s a pause while Hinata hurries to clean up the boxes and wrappers from their meal and tuck the canteen of water away and hope that Shikamaru will just let the subject drop. She thinks she’s in the clear for awhile, that he’ll just politely ignore what a mess she is, at least until to comes time for him to write his report about the mission. 

But then, when she’s settled back down under the blankets facing him again but carefully avoiding eye contact, he says, “You look like I’m going to drop this cave on you, but I was just telling the truth.” He waits for her to respond, and when she doesn’t he sighs and asks, “Just what is it that you think you did wrong?” 

A direct question — she can’t _not answer_ , that’s insubordination. “I missed the seal,” she eeks out in a voice that cracks and breaks. “I shouldn’t even be on this mission.” 

She has to hide her face in her hands after that, can’t even look at Shikamaru. 

“Seriously?” He sounds surprised, but not angry. “If it had been anyone _but_ you, I’d be freezing to death alone right now.” He reaches his uninjured hand up under the blanket, flails it around a little clumsily, and eventually lands on her shoulder. “A mistake is just a mistake. Being too critical of yourself is just as bad as being self-aggrandizing.” 

His hand rubs small circles on her shoulder as he talks, and then she’s crying frustrated, relieved tears before she even knows what’s happened. It’s not that no one touches her kindly — these days there are so many people — but it’s such a surprise for it to be _Nara Shikamaru_. 

She doesn’t feel like she deserves it, but it’s not like she can _argue_. 

Shikamaru goes on, “Besides, this is no big deal. The mission’s probably shot to hell, and I need a damn smoke—” 

“Ah, um,” Hinata interrupts. 

He raises his eyebrows at her. 

“Smoking raises the risk of hypothermia,” she says, “so... don’t?” 

He laughs, and it’s a soft, kind thing that settles between them. “Deal, but never mention it to Ino. Anyway. We’re alive and together, so we’ll figure it out. Did you see anything to tell us which mountain range we’re in?” 

“The angle of the sun was wrong for Land of Snow,” Hinata says after a moment of consideration. “And the rock is wrong for Land of Earth.” 

“That narrows it down. And we were standing closest to each other, about a meter apart... and farthest away from the seal... so...” He trails off, the same way he used to at the Academy when he was working through a problem. 

Content to let him think again, Hinata stays quiet and enjoys the continued contact of his hand on her shoulder, which Shikamaru seems to have forgotten about. 

“I can probably work out where we are,” Shikamaru says. “And maybe where the others would have landed, too... if you have a measuring tape.” 

“I have two,” Hinata says, sitting up a little. “Do you need them now?” 

“Not until the sun is up. We’re going to measure some shadows.” Shikamaru yawns. “The fire will last for awhile. We should rest while we still can.” 

“Okay,” Hinata says, quietly relieved. 

She and Shikamaru received the same instructions on cold weather survival in the Academy, so when the hand he still has on her shoulder pushes gently back, she knows what he means and rolls onto her other side, facing away from him. Then Shikamaru closes the distance. His arm wraps around her middle. His chest presses to her back. They sort out their limbs. 

“Everything will be better in the morning,” Shikamaru promises her, and she believes him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [White-Eyes](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41662/white-eyes) by Mary Oliver


End file.
